SEGUNDO PERIODO (1998-2011)

Both South Africa and Uganda introduced decentralised school governance, as well as having a representative democracy where state hegemony occupies a pivotal role. In Uganda the National Resistance Movement (NRM) formally came into power in 1996 under a “guerrilla resistance leader” -Yoweri Museveni. It undertook economic liberalisation to resuscitate a shattered economy – all aimed at fostering democratic legitimacy (Rubongoya, 2007:285-286). The all-important task of reconstructing the state in the five years from 1996 to 2006, took place along a comparatively liberal and democratic course (Rubongoya, 2007:286). The Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, with reference to article 69 states that:

(1) The people of Uganda shall have the right to choose and adopt a political system of their choice through free and fair elections or referenda.

83

The political system referred to in clause (1) of this article shall include:

1.1 the movement political system;

1.2 the multiparty political system; and

1.3 any other democratic and representative of the political system (Article 70, Movement political system);

1.4 The movement political system is a broad-based, inclusive and non-partisan and shall conform to the following principles:

1.4.1 participatory democracy;

1.4.2 democracy, accountability and transparency;

1.4.3 accessibility to all positions of leadership by all citizens;

1.4.4 individual merit as a basis.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Ugandan Government introduced the Universal Primary Education System (UPE) in Uganda in 1997. The whole purpose was to improve the quality of teaching and learning in primary education (Munene, Odada, & Carrrasco, 1997:1-2). The project aimed to equip primary schools with the Learner teacher support material such as textbooks and writing books which was urgently needed. More vitally the project focussed on the management of primary education, the training of primary school teachers, for example by using a Teacher Development and Management System (Mukisa, Mugisha & Zeitlin, 2007:3-4).

A key focus was the erection of new primary schools to service the needs of the growing population of primary school going children. In 1997, the Ugandan government embarked on a twenty-year Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) and Poverty Action Fund (PAF).These plans were aimed at providing primary education which would then act as a buffer against poverty by 2020 (Ministry of Planning and Economic Development [MPED]

1997). As a spill off from this, the UPE project would provide full tuition to four children per household (Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES), 1998). To highlight the role of primary education in poverty eradication, the government identified UPE as one of the key sectors to benefit from the PAF. Through a capitation grant, PAF enables UPE to improve equitable access to basic education by making schooling free and improving the quality of primary education (MoES, 2002). UPE’s main thrust was to get the community actively involved in the administration of the scheme in each primary school. The particular school community was directly responsible for the following:

(a) Assisting with the construction of school buildings by providing locally manufactured materials such as bricks, stones, sand, water and labour;

84

(b) Motivating compulsory school attendance and supporting pupils once in school to ensure that they remained there;

(c) Helping with the security and safety of pupils and the school buildings;

 Supplying time, ideas and energy in order to enhance the teaching and learning programmes;

 Instituting positive discipline methods for pupils both in and out of the school environment;

 Monitoring the use of resources so that it is used in promoting teaching, learning and guaranteeing that school personnel use positive discipline methods;

 Schools are encouraged to make maximum use of the Co-ordinating Centre Tutor serving the school;

 Pupil - learning at home and at school is enhanced through the inclusion of the community in co-ordination projects;

 Ensuring that safe water, stores, office and staffroom signposts, and recreational facilities are available

 Dedicated involvement of all in sanitation projects of their school.

UPE defines a meaningful school community as one which comprises a School Management Committee made up of accepted leaders within that community. Secondly volunteer parents from the particular school community make up the Parent teacher Association. The third group comprises all those who consider it their civic duty to assist the school in a positive manner (MoES, 2002).

Through involving the local community in the operational life of the school it appeared that Uganda had embraced democracy and was prepared to transfer autonomy to individual schools. In practice however there is an unusually wide gap between decentralisation policy and implementation in many developing country systems (De Grauwe, Lugaz, Baldé, Diakhaté, Dougnon, Moustapha and Odushina, 2005:3-4.). Extraneous role players within the environments in which it operates produces results that are not expected by decentralisation policy. In impoverished communities in African countries, in particular Uganda, mainly because it has been ravaged by civil war, decentralised governance is short-lived (Bray & Mukundan, 2004:12-13). Most war- torn countries, like Uganda, are left with both physical and other resources depleted. UPE promised to distribute governance to local school communities and it would be an ideal solution to ensure that local communities inherit the education of their children. To ensure international support for this programme, international donor groups needed to be shown that Uganda was making a sincere effort to

85

institute democratic forms of governance in all its public institutions. In fact it could be said that Uganda had an obligation to the international community since its national budget was dependent on donor funds. It appeared that democracy had been entrenched in Uganda with a new programme called “Education for All” (Reinikka & Svensson (2005:2). As far as the goals were concerned, Bray and Mukundan (2004:14) point out, that “decentralisation is likely to provide the desired expansion of access and improvement in quality of provision”.

In most African countries it has been revealed that different regimes and leaders could have their own agendas and would manipulate communities to their own ends. Distributed governance of public institutions is not simply a unitary concept, but has different forms for different functions. According to Naidoo (2002:2), “it (decentralisation) may be defined in terms of the form (functional activities) and level (national to sub-national) as well as the nature or degree of power that is transferred. Administrative, financial, environment and political dimensions capture the form (functional activities) and level (national to sub-national and local) of decentralisation while devolution, de-concentration, and delegation refer to the nature and degree of power being transferred (Naidoo, id). Mukisa, Mugisha and Zeitlin (2007:3) reveal that in the last five years Uganda has seen the systematic establishing of what has been termed a “neo-patrimonial” regime. This regime is one dominated by an individual leader whose personal authority was synonymous with the state and in which political power was “maintained through a combination of patronage and the selective use of intimidation and force” (Rubongoya, 2007:285-287).

When the Ugandan National Resistance Movement (NRM) came into power after a protracted period of anarchy and genocide under the guise of ethnic cleansing the economic and political governance, was in disarray. The dire need to establish security, state bureaucracy and a stable economy became the NRMs foremost challenge (Barkan &

Mamdani, 2004:287). Hayden (2006:39) contends that the regime needed all the various ethnic and political groups to trust and commit themselves to its policies. This desire to win over all the ethnic factions in the different parts of Uganda was because it would guarantee integration (Hayden, id). Party political affiliation by the community would ensure that regional constituencies would be loyal to the NRM. International observers agree that in the first period of its rule, the NRM achieved measurable results which threatened democracy in Uganda, as for example in northern Uganda where ethnic divisions and suspicions about the regime remained ingrained. By 1996, security, rule of law, and respect for basic human rights had been largely re-established in South, Central, and Western Uganda (Makara, Rakner & Svåsand, and 2007:2). Economic liberalization and the introduction of measures designed to ensure macro-economic stability had so convinced the International Monetary

86

Fund and the World Bank of the NRMs sincerity, that this resulted in large injections of resources by both multilateral and bilateral donors (www.transparency.org: Accessed on 20 November 2014). Basic functions of government had been re-established at national and sub-national levels and a strategy of political inclusion through the creation of avenues of broad public participation in governance within the context of the NRM system had achieved significant public acceptance in much of the country. Economic liberalization was to a considerable degree accompanied by political liberalization, and the regime assured a variety of basic freedoms essential to democratic governance (www.transparency.org:

Accessed on 21 November 2014).

Challenges of democratic institutional consolidation or, as it has been termed, the challenge of establishing “a legitimate, enduring and stable political process through which all groups, regardless of region or ethnicity, would have a meaningful stake and be able to contest for power in the new system had however not been achieved (Deininger, 2005:292).Despite attempts by loyalists of Museveni the Movement system (or the Museveni System, who was the architect of this system) failed and revealed that democratisation was not properly in place in Uganda (Deininger, 2005:291). More importantly the collapse of the movement system exacerbated the negative political and economic conditions which became a source of consternation for international observers over the past ten years (Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS), 2006:38).

The Museveni regime’s method of instituting stability following the elongated period of civil strife and was manifested in the concept “ the movement system,” which defined an exchange between democratization and the efficiencies of centralized authoritarian structures (Makara, Rakner & Svåsand, 2007:2). Parochial politics was preferred in the NRMs system of government; because of this a multi-party political system was purposely delayed. The NRM assumed that their political dispensation would bring the time and political space that it saw to be essential to stabilisation (www.transparency.org: Accessed on 20 November 2014). These delaying tactics proved to be a major contributory factor to the NRMs demise. Next the NRM institutionalized structures that would pose a threat to its position once stabilisation had been achieved. While political liberalization occurred and citizen participation in governance at all levels increased drastically, the executive branch’s willingness to tolerate the consolidation of institutions or organizational structures (political parties) capable of effectively competing with, challenging, or constraining executive prerogative had been limited. As Barkan, Saille, Kayunga, Njuguna and Tilsworth (2004:iii) have noted, “the limits of reform, both economic and political, have been set by the commitment to stay in power.”

87

Uganda relies heavily on International funding to sustain the country. One of the conditions attached to foreign aid is that Democratic principles are in place and are practised (Barkan et al., 2004:18).

International donors are reluctant to sacrifice short-term development objectives against the possibility of sustainable development over the longer term. Studies conducted in 2000 by International bodies focused on the NRMs tendency to tamper with democratic forms (the 2000 constitutional referendum) to guarantee regime legitimation (Barkan et al., 2004: iii-iv).Observers suggested that the regime’s behaviour during the referendum campaign

“revealed many of the proven signs of a move towards the logic of a one-party state, with the active mobilization of the Movement and threatening the opposition.” In the absence of a fundamental turn-around on the present governance stance, where almost all power is vested in the leadership, it seems that the NRMs attempts at distributed governance, particularly to schools is a sham (Barkan et al., id).

The present analysis reaffirms the view and suggests that, although serious issues of inclusion, governance, and fragility persist and have the potential to fuel future conflict, the predominant issues in Uganda relate to competition. Unless an element of meaningful competition is reintroduced, we would expect negative trends to continue and deepen as dissatisfaction deepens and the system becomes progressively less able to resolve inherent tensions (www.transparency.orgwww.transparency.org: Accessed on 20 November 2014).

United Nations observers are of the opinion that democracy as is currently practised in Uganda has produced unpalatable results (Mushemeza, 2000:32). This is associated with the nature of the Ugandan state and the dictates of the NRM. The U.N. observers maintain that instead of the return to civil rule, Ugandans, find themselves talking of returning to democracy, which is understandable since the NRM did give Ugandans a brand of democracy which included shared governance (Makara et al., 2007:2). “The press, for instance, is incessantly drumming into our ears that “we are a democratic country” and bellowing that “in a democratic country like Uganda”, this or that should not happen. The press thus, seems completely unaware of the cardinal fact that neither during colonial rule nor since independence has Uganda been a democratic country, (Ogundiya, 2010:201-208).

This argument is still forceful today. In a similar vein, Mushemeza,(2000:33) contends that it would constitute a very difficult problem for political theorists to determine the classification of Uganda's type of government. It is definitely not an aristocracy, because by its very definition, aristocracy means government by the best. It is of course not democracy because at least in its modern understanding, democracy is government of the people by the people

88

and for the people. What then is it? It is a government infested with, self-seeking, ideology-barren, orientation less operatives; usually selected by their kind and of course scarcely ever elected by the people (Barkan et al., 2004: iii-iv). Even in the guise of multi-party election, in Uganda those chosen to rule are clearly predetermined and chosen even before elections takes place. This assertion is still plausible today. The reason for Mushemeza,(2000:32) conclusion is not far-fetched, in terms of outcome; Ugandans have not significantly reaped the dividends of democracy. Secondly, Uganda’s democracy has been violence ridden characterized with wanton destruction of lives and properties (Ogundiya 2010:208). More importantly, the peoples’ vote seems not to count in determining who governs as elections are rigged or its outcome determined before the poll. Therefore, procedurally, democracy in Uganda is lamed and in terms of its conceptual outcome has failed to meet the expectations of the people. Furthermore, Uganda’s democracy (if it could be so described) has tended to promote inequality rather than equality. Reinikka R & Svensson J (2005:1-9) comment is also instructive; there can be no genuine democracy in a country where citizens are grossly unequal in wealth and the poor who are invariably the majority, are dependent on the wealthy. This fact, that wealth is power, where such a cleavage and dependency exist, political power is inevitably in the hands of the wealthy. In this scenario, democracy ceases to be democracy in reality; in effect it is a plutocracy. In essence, a responsible and accountable leadership should particularly in Education decouple policy implementation and policy advice from policy making (www.equip123.net/JEID/articles/1/1-1: Accessed on 12 November 2013). It should also:

• ensure freedom from politically motivated interference;

• preserve policy continuity, which is seen as a necessary condition of policy credibility;

• ensure independence of decision-making to promote lifelong learning

• allowing school communities and specialised professionals like teachers into the public decision-making process (ibid).

A comparison of the extent of decentralisation and the differences in the way distributed school governance is interpreted by the state in these two African countries (South Africa and Uganda) show similarities. The main similarity is particularly in the manner in which the state is reluctant to decentralise decision-making power to schools. According to Hofstede (1990:23) there is inequality in any society. Some people have more power than others and they are more able to determine the behaviour of others than vice versa. Some people have more status than other and some acquire more wealth than others. Such inequality

89